[KDE] Which Phonon? Phonon backend - GStreamer or Xine?

[Kevin Kofler]

Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
> Another interesting thing is PA & Phonon integration work by Colin Guthrie
> (see the link in my first message). Phonon just as wrapper/thin client for
> PA with nicer Qt like API. I like this idea.

That's not what his current work does, and it's not really possible as PA 
doesn't do decoding, so you'd still need some decoding library.

Colin Guthrie's branch still uses GStreamer or xine-lib (he's currently 
working with both backends because he knows both are used). What it adds is 
that PA sinks show up as Phonon devices so you can choose where to direct 
your output to, as opposed to the one big "PulseAudio" device we currently 
have (where it just uses the sink set as default in PA). I suppose he's also 
going to tag the streams with the PA stream type matching the Phonon stream 
type the application sets, if he doesn't already.

So this lets you use Phonon's flexibility (directing specific types of 
streams to specific outputs) while still using PulseAudio, you don't have to 
choose one or the other anymore.

        Kevin Kofler